Lake County Sheriff's Office receives trauma bags

Jeff Forman/JForman@News-Herald.com

Lake County Sheriff Chief Deputy Frank Leonbruno, left, Daniel Ellenberger, of University Hospitals, and Concord Township Fire Chief Mike Warner look over the contents of trauma bags that the Sheriff's Department received from the hospital system Thursday at the Concord Township Fire Station 1.

The Lake County Sheriff’s Office received 15 trauma bags from University Hospitals Geauga Medical Center Thursday.
The bags, which include tourniquets, combat gauze and chest seals, among other items, were requested by Concord Township Fire Chief Mike Warner. The trauma bags were presented to the Sheriff’s Office at Fire Station 1 in Concord Township.
“We’re partners,” Warner said. “This is our police department in Concord. We do things together. This is just the beginning of future training and procedures that we’re going to be able to do together.”
Warner said that by using county resources, Concord Township residents save a lot of money.
Through the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, the township gets road patrol, dispatch, a detective bureau, courts and a jail.
“You don’t get that with a community that would try to build a police department,” he said. “It’s a good way to use our resources by working with the sheriff.”
Requesting the trauma bags was one way for them to give back to the county.
“If we can help our county resources, it’s the best thing we can do,” he said.
UH Geauga Medical Center President M. Steven Jones said as a hospital, part of its responsibility is to work
collaboratively with community leaders, fire departments and sheriff’s offices.
“Geauga Medical Center is also taking on the responsibility of becoming a trauma center,” Jones said.
“With that, it gives us additional responsibilities within the community to partner and identify needs that are unmet needs.”
Jones said the medical center wanted to be able to reach out and provide the Sheriff’s Office with lifesaving medical resources.
“They’re first responders just as our paramedics are,” he said. “We find ourselves in all kinds of situations these days. You never know what you’re walking into.”
A trauma bag recently was used to save the life of a man who was shot in eastern Geauga County, but Lake County Chief Deputy Frank Leonbruno said there’s no estimate on how many lives will be saved per year.
“Our hope is that it is never used,” Frank Leonbruno said.
“There’s no date, no time you can expect to have to use those.”
Leonbruno said it is never known when a multi-vehicle pileup on Interstate 90 will happen or when a car will crash into a pole, but with the trauma bags, they will be prepared.
“If it saves one law enforcement officer, one resident, we’re happy,” Jones said.